


Seth, Lies & Video-Tape

by DoubleBit



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Ableist Language, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Asthma, Blow Jobs, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Fights, First Time, Homophobic Language, Implied Sibling Incest, M/M, Nathan tries to help, Non-consensual video involving a minor, Panic Attacks, Pickles is seriously repressing some stuff, Seth is awful, Triggers, Underage Drinking, Underage Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-07-20 01:56:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7386166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubleBit/pseuds/DoubleBit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While converting the family's VHS collection, Seth comes across a memory that Pickles would rather leave buried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Incoming Text

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm in love with fucked-up, small-town Pickles, who's 16 during the events in question.
> 
> This story is basically complete, but I'm posting as I finish final drafts. There's some icky stuff in here, so please be careful. As always, thanks for reading. <3

The chime of an incoming text startled Pickles awake, and in the darkened room he groped for his DethPhone on the nightstand where it ought to be. This wasn’t his bedroom, though, and the sound came from the floor, where Pickles’ pants lay crumpled in a pile with his socks and his underwear, a beer bottle and a couple empty condom wrappers.

“Fackin’ _shit,_ ” he huffed, hanging half-off the bed to paw through his clothes until his fingers lit on the cold metal of the phone. Nathan liked his room pitch black, and insisted he couldn’t sleep without the heavy, light-proof curtains drawn tightly shut across the windows. In the darkness, the glow of the screen seemed blinding, and Pickles blinked at it several times before reading:

_Text from: Seth_

Pickles groaned. Seth only texted when he wanted something, or – more rarely and dreadfully – when he was blazed as fuck and just wanted to talk. In any case, Pickles already felt a sharp headache building just behind his eyes.

_Hey brother mine._

_How’s it going?_

In the bed beside him, Nathan shifted, and Pickles pulled the sheets up to obscure the screen from view. The phone sounded again, and Pickles cursed and switched it to vibrate.

_It’s 2am. I know you’re not asleep._

Pickles rolled onto his side, the heat of Nate’s back pressed against his own. How was the guy always so warm? He contemplated ignoring the message and trying to go back to sleep, but Seth was nothing if not persistently awful, so Pickles tapped out a reply:

_**What do you want?** _

_Can’t I just check up on you?_ Seth replied, and Pickles could practically _see_ his brother’s fucking _smirk,_ that raised eyebrow, that head full of thick fucking hair.

_**Fuck you. I’m turning off my phone.** _

_No you’re not. You haven’t figured out how._

_If you knew how to use your phone, you would have blocked my number by now._

Maybe the worst thing about Seth – though only one among many contending attributes – was the fact that no one knew Pickles better. And maybe Nathan knew Pickles’ favorite everything, and Charles knew his entire medical history and probably his genetic code, and Tony knew a lot of things that even Pickles had forgotten, but somehow it was Seth’s gross reptile brain that connected with Pickles on a primordial level, capable of reaching out to him even into adulthood just for the sake of making him feel weak and fearful for its own sadistic entertainment.

_**If you don’t get to the point, I’ll just have the entire network shut off.** _

_**Because I can.** _

_**I swear to fucking god.** _

_Ok ok._

_So I’m digitizing all of Mom and Dad’s old VHS tapes._

Pickles rolled his eyes as he imagined Seth in his room above the garage (though of course Seth was in Sydney), high as a kite and watching home movies of his own shitty trombone recitals.

_**Wow – way to go. They must be paying you.** _

Two replies arrived in quick succession:

_And I found your old tape._

_Ha ha very funny. But yeah, they are._

Pickles’ stomach lurched. _**What tape?**_

_You know what tape._

Pickles cast a quick glance at Nathan – broad shoulders illuminated by the phone, sides still rising and falling evenly. Just the sight of him usually inspired a sense of safety, but Pickles only felt a cold dread, crushing his chest like a stone as he prayed that Nate wouldn’t wake up just now. His fingers left sweaty smudges across the screen of his phone as he typed:

_**I’m serious. What tape?** _

_That’s not gonna work, bro._

_You know what tape._

And before Pickles could breathe, there was the mp4, waiting in his inbox. From the still alone, he recognized the scene, though he’d only been there once – a bedroom in an old party-house, a three-story Victorian on the corner of 7th and Prospect where he found himself one Halloween, slamming shots and smoking weed, and…

The sheets were blue. There were girls’ clothes strewn across the floor – skirts and bras and panties; a poster of Jimmy Page; a few old stuffed animals; and the whole place smelled like fake flowers and cigarettes.

Pickles hit Play and braced himself.

Given that he noticed all those other details, Pickles wondered how he’d failed to spot the camera, which – judging from the angle and its unobstructed view – must’ve been sitting in plain sight on a desk or a shelf.

_The lens faces the doorway – the figure of a boy appears, tall and athletic, backlit by the light in the hall._

_“Seerah said we could use dis room,” he says._

_And then there’s another silhouette, the one Pickles knows for his own – from the wild hair, from the slim build, from the way he clutches the doorframe for stability and from the voice that slurs out, “Shit, dood, I keen’t – I ain’t never – oh, fack – let’s jest lee down fer a bit, huh? – an’ I do – I mean, I **will,** but ya know I – I ain’t never –”_

_Text From: Seth_

Pickles closed the player with trembling fingers, swallowing a wave of nausea before reading:

_Good times, huh?_

_You’re lucky I found it before Mom and Dad accidentally popped it into their VCR._

_**Have you shown anyone?** _

_Lucky they decided to have me do this instead of taking it to that place in the mall._

Pickles wanted to scream.

_**HAVE YOU SHOWN ANYONE?** _

Seth decided to torture him by allowing five minutes to pass, during which time Pickles lay with the phone on his chest, hands fisted into the sheets, tears stinging at the corners of his eyes while he tried to slow his breathing, trying to remember the last place he’d even _seen_ his goddamn inhaler. A few strands of Nathan’s hair fell onto Pickles’ shoulders.

“Fack,” he whispered to himself. “Oh facking _fack._ ”

_Text From: Seth_

_Give me some credit, dude._

_Not yet. ;)_

Pickles sighed. Seth was angling for cold manipulation rather than impulsive destruction – so at least that was something. Pickles reiterated his original question.

_**So what do you WANT?** _

_Not sure yet._

_I’ll keep you posted._

_Try to get some sleep little bro._

_You always did party too hard._

_XOXO_

_**I’ll fucking bury you,**_ Pickles entered, and then quickly deleted. That kind of wishful thinking had never made anything better.

After a few minutes, the screen of his phone went black, and Pickles dropped it back onto the floor. An hour later, he gave up trying to sleep and pulled on his pants and socks, gathered the phone and his wallet and tip-toed towards the door.

“Mmm. Pickles?”

Pickles froze. “Yeah?”

He heard the mattress creak, Nathan’s groggy voice asking him, “Where you going?”

Pickles paused before replying, and hoped that Nate would miss the strain in his tone as he tried to sound casually indifferent. “Jest goin’ back ta my room.”

“You, uh… you could always just stay here. Or whatever.”

“Nah. Dat’s okee. I uh, didn’t mean ta fall asleep an ya.” He opened the door a crack, and Nathan groaned at the intrusion of torchlight from the corridor. “Shit. Sarry. Go back ta bed, dood. I’ll see ya when I see ya.” He slipped into the hall and closed the door behind him before Nate could answer.

Padding softly back to his own bedroom, Pickles felt an undeniable guilt compounding the anxious twisting in his guts. He shouldn’t feel that – rationally, he knew he shouldn’t feel _anything._ That was part of the original arrangement, after all – No Spending the Night. Though honestly, they’d been breaking all sorts of rules lately – just two days before, Nathan had laid a hard smack across Pickles’ ass the moment Skwisgaar left the studio to take a piss, and the week before _that,_ Pickles may or may not have whined out Nathan’s name seconds before coming all over his own stomach and Nate’s fancy imported sheets.

Nathan broke the rules more often, but Pickles found it difficult to be upset; the whole thing still felt very _new_ to Nate, judging by the way his eyes lit up every time he saw Pickles even half-naked. And truthfully, the rules weren’t _for_ Nathan. They weren’t even for the rest of the guys – Pickles suspected that Skwisgaar knew _something,_ while Toki seemed typically oblivious, and Murderface worried more about being excluded than he worried about what exactly he was being excluded _from._

“Da rules are fer _me,_ dood,” Pickles had explained, even as he resisted the urge to break his own rule against affectionate touching and take Nathan’s hand. 

“Why do you need rules? Rules are fucking stupid.” And of course Nate would never _say,_ this, but Pickles could hear the underlying question – “Why don’t you trust me?” – as loudly as if Nathan had screamed it.

 _‘Cause ya get hurt when ya play wit’out rules,_ Pickles didn’t say, instead falling back on some lame explanation about not wanting to damage their working relationship, which wasn’t exactly _untrue,_ but also wasn’t exactly honest. “I don’t wanna make it – ya know, _weird_ fer everybody,” he said.

 _Yeah right._ Like things hadn’t started to get weird from the first time Nathan gaped at Pickles’ trimmed red bush and freckled thighs like a kid in a fucking candy store. But the _rules_ prevented Pickles from making it worse by giving words to that look, or to how it made him feel.

In his private bathroom, Pickles avoided the red-eyed gaze of his reflection as he opened the medicine cabinet to rifle through a cornucopia of pills, searching for the little blue-and-whites that ushered him into a perfect, dreamless sleep when taken with a shot (or three) of tequila. Pickles climbed into bed, checked his messages one last time, and when he opened his eyes again, it was morning and he’d been gripping his phone so tightly that the edges of it cut into the flesh of his palm.


	2. Tomahawk, 1988

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pickles finds a fun way to pass the time, and Seth finds a way to profit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, readers! 
> 
> (Apologies-not-apologies for the terrible accents again.)

The first time Pickles went down on one of Seth’s friends, it was more serendipity than anything. Three weeks before the beginning of his sophomore year, a late-summer thunderstorm flooded the gutters of Tomahawk and left Pickles standing soaked in front of the supermarket with water seeping through the holes in his Chucks and four ice-cold tall-boys shoved down the front of his leather jacket. He cursed under his breath and began to walk towards the park, where he intended to get drunk behind the tennis courts before heading home as late as possible. (His mother began the summer hounding him to get a job, but after he was fired from Burzum’s inside of two days, she resigned herself to cold silence, and Pickles had spent the rest of his vacation getting high, playing guitar, and raiding the sofa cushions for quarters to spend at the arcade in the mall.)

While Pickles waited for a stop-light to change, a familiar red Mustang with black racing stripes blew past him, then screeched to a halt and reversed, splashing filthy water all over his shins while the driver of the car reached over to roll down the passenger-side window and shout:

“Pickles! Heey, dood – what da fack ya doin’ out in dis shitstorm?”

Pickles hesitated. Among Seth’s friends, Zack seemed the least likely to end up in prison; he’d been issued a couple MIPs (who hadn’t?), and picked up once for DUI when he ran his dad’s truck through a guardrail on 51 South, and he’d never been caught selling his mom’s Lexapro or his own Ritalin in the east-wing bathroom of Tomahawk High School. But he’d also managed to graduate, and received a scholarship to play lacrosse at UW – Eau Claire in the fall; more importantly, though, he rarely laughed at Seth’s jokes. So Pickles approached the car.

“Jest doin’ some shappin’. I tat you’da left fer caallege by now.”

Zack shook his head. He wore his blue-and-yellow letterman’s jacket, a few locks of light-brown hair clinging damply to his cheeks as he smiled and said, “Nah. Nat til next weekend. Heey, let me give ya a ride, huh? Yer ganna fackin’ drown out dere.”

Pickles scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, sure, okee.”

Zack hardly gave him time to close the door before he hit the gas and sped off down the block. The sound of clinking glass from the back seat caused Pickles to look over his shoulder, where a milk-crate filled with liquor bottles jostled around between a twelve-pack of Dr. Pepper and a case of Old Milwaukee.

“Holy shit, dood – dat’s a lat of booze.”

Zack snorted. “Right? An’ dat’s only like, _half_ my mam’s stash.” He nodded at the bulge in Pickles’ jacket, where the top of a can peeked out above his zipper, and gave a knowing smirk. “What ya gat dere – pap?”

Pickles unzipped his jacket and let the cans tumble out into his lap. “Heh. Nat exactly.” He tugged at the front of his t-shirt. “Fack. Dat’s fackin’ _cold._ ”

“Ya know, sooner er later, dey’re ganna ban ya from dat store.”

Pickles cracked open a drink and slurped the froth that spilled out the mouth of the can. “I ain’t gat cat yet,” he said with a shrug.

“Ya know dat’s jest ‘cause old Mr. Nelson feels sarry fer yer mam an’ doesn’t wanna bust ya, right?”

Pickles frowned. “Jest take me by da park, huh? Ya can drap me aff by da playground er whatever.”

“Ugh. Dood. Drinkin’ at da park is fackin’ _lame._ Fackin’ junior hey shit.” The car lurched to a sudden halt at a stop-light, and Pickles’ beer sloshed onto his chin and chest.

“Fack! Fackin’ learn to _drive,_ dood!”

“Sarry.” Zack’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel while he watched Pickles lick the side of the can. “Heey, look – drinkin’ at da park is fackin’ stupid, an’ anywee, it’s fackin’ pourin’ out dere. I know dis pullout aff da Double-C where dere’s like, dis creepy abandoned cabin – real old, like. Looks like some shit outta fackin’ _Evil Dead_ or somethin’. Wanna go check it out?”

Pickles weighed the possibility that Zack was setting him up for a prank, like the previous summer when Seth’s friend Ty invited him to a Saturday-night party, and Pickles woke the following morning to find himself naked and tied to the base of the crucifix in front St. Mary. “Who else is ganna be dere?” he asked.

Zack hung a sloppy, wide turn onto Bridge Street. “I mean, nobody. I jest now had dis idea. I was plannin’ an headin’ over ta my brother’s house, but… I dunno. Goin’ out an’ gettin’ tanked in da woods sounds like more fun than what either of us had planned, don’t ya think?”

“Yeah, sure, but –”

“An’ I ain’t fackin’ wit’ ya, if dat’s what yer worried about. No tricks er pranks er nothin’ like dat. I won’t even try writin’ on yer face wit’ markers.” Zack held up the three middle fingers of his right hand, his gaudy class ring catching Pickles’ eye. “Scout’s honor,” he said, and then turned to look at Pickles with something like sympathy. “‘Sides, I know all about bein’ da youngest. My older brother, Jack – I mean, he ain’t nothin’ like Seth, but still… what a fackin’ dildo. Heey, can I get a sip’a dat beer?”

True to Zack’s word, they saw no one else after turning down an unsigned dirt road, through a thick stand of pine until they arrived in front of a tiny, decrepit trapper’s cabin that looked even older than Pickles had expected – hewn from hemlock, the roof smothered by dried needles. He imagined the musty smell inside, dead animals maybe, and graffiti and broken bottles. But they never left the car.

By the time he’d finished his second beer, the rain was falling so heavily against the glass that the woods and the cabin became a dark blur, and neither Pickles nor Zack felt particularly moved to leave the dry interior of the Mustang to go exploring. Instead, Zack opened a bottle of Crown Royale and passed it to Pickles first.

Things got fuzzy from there. Pickles remembered opening the door to piss, and he remembered Zack playing with the radio dials, searching for anything besides talk. At some point, they finished the bottle, and Zack rolled down his window to huck it outside, well away from the car. He remembered their breath fogging up the windows, making the cab feel like a muggy mess. They both took off their jackets and opened another bottle of something, and Pickles spilled what smelled like gin all down the front of his shirt, while Zack laughed and swore at him for getting it on the seat.

He didn’t remember whose idea the kiss was, though judging by the way he had sprawled over the bucket seat, holding himself upright with one hand on the headrest and one on Zack’s thigh, it was probably his own. “No wee. No fackin’ wee,” Zack was saying, though when Pickles pulled back, Zack only pulled him down again by the wet collar of his t-shirt, adding, “Jesus, no – don’t – don’t fackin’ _stap,_ dood.”

The whole scene felt strange – a hazy mixture of wonder and fear, and the unrelenting ache of Pickles’ cock as his hips rutted against the soft leather of the bench seat and one hand slipped tentatively under the hem of Zack’s shirt. Zack grabbed Pickles’ wrist, guided his hand back down toward his erection, and Pickles gasped, startled by the reality of the situation, by the fact that he’d actually managed to give someone else a boner with his inexperienced, toothy kissing.

“What, uh – what do ya want me ta do?” he asked, apprehensively.

Zack laughed and ground up into his touch. “Jeez – what do ya _think_ I fackin’ want ya ta do?”

The smell of it was intimidating, but the taste not as unpleasant as Pickles had expected. And once he followed Zack’s advice – “Relax, dood – oh – fack – jest slow down a little – yeah, like dat – jest fackin’ _relax_ ” – he found that he only gagged two or three times. It had never occurred to Pickles that being on the losing end of a blow-job might actually be enjoyable in its own right, but hearing Zack lose his shit – at one point slamming his head back against the window so violently that Pickles thought it might break – made him feel unexpectedly powerful. And every iteration of “Oh fack – oh my Gad – oh Jesus” pushed him closer to his own orgasm, until Zack gave a sharp tug on his hair and looked down at him with glassy, bloodshot eyes.

“Heey, ya might wanna –”

Pickles barely had time to register Zack’s implication when he felt the thick, bitter rush of it filling his mouth, and his stomach heaved in response.

“Sarry,” Zack managed, tucking himself back into his jeans as Pickles spit a mouthful of jizz into an empty beer can. “Shit, I’m sarry. I didn’t mean fer – I didn’t mean ta – yer jest so – I usually don’t uh, come dat _fast,_ but – ya jest – _fack,_ man.”

Sliding back into the passenger’s seat, Pickles opened the door and flung the can into the trees. The rain persisted, though gentler than before. He leaned his seat back, kneading at his crotch with the heel of his palm, biting his bottom lip while one hand crept up beneath his dingy black t-shirt to play with a nipple-ring. “‘S okee, dood. It happens. Ya don’t gatta ‘pologize. Jest – fack, it’s – it’s my turn now, right?” Pickles unzipped his fly and continued rubbing himself through the front of his briefs, watching Zack expectantly. He had always wondered what this would be like – if it would feel the same as with a girl – but Zack only cleared his throat and looked at the console.

“I, uh – it’s gettin’ kinda dark,” he said. “We should prably get back ta town, don’t ya think?”

Pickles’ hands stilled on his body and he lifted his head to glare at Zack. “Are ya – are ya _fackin’_ with me right now? Ya jest came _in my mouth,_ an’ yer nat even ganna offer ta like, jerk me aff er whatever?” Pickles’ anger quickly gave way to an even deeper disappointment, and he let his head fall back against the headrest. “Jeez, man – ya gatta be fackin’ _kiddin’_ me.”

“Look, dood –” Zack turned the key in the ignition and put the car into gear. “Don’t – please don’t make dis a _thing,_ okee? Dat wasn’t even s’posed ta _happen._ I jest tat ya could use a ride, an’ maybe we’d have some beers, an’ den ya came at me wit’ – I didn’t – I mean, I’m nat – It felt really good like – like, _fack_ – an’ I wish I could do dat fer ya, but I’m nat really – um, I’m nat, ya know – _queer,_ an’ I think I should prably jest take ya home now, okee?”

Pickles zipped up his jeans and snatched his jacket from the floor, feeling naked all of a sudden. He folded his arms across his chest and glowered out the window as they drove towards town. “Fine. Jest take me home, den. I don’t give a fack. Jest –” He hated the way his voice wavered, and cleared his throat before going on: “Jest please don’t tell Seth, huh?”

“I won’t. I pramise. But jeez, Pickles – yer – yer too fackin’ – ya gatta be more _careful._ ”

 

Pickles scoffed. “ _I’m_ nat da one who _‘accidentally’_ gat his dick sucked by another guy.”

To his credit though, Zack _didn’t_ tell Seth – but he must’ve confided in someone _else_ before he left for Eau Claire, because by the second week of September, Pickles went from being known as “Seth’s little brother – he’s a fackin’ shit-show” to “Seth’s little brother – he’s a fackin’ shit-show an’ he’ll totally suck yer dick if ya put enough liquor in him.” So Pickles got better at swallowing, and while a part of him found his new reputation gross and more than a little degrading, a bigger part of him fucking _loved_ knowing that half the reason Seth’s friends even came over was to see if they could get Pickles alone for a few minutes – in the bathroom or the basement, or even Seth’s bedroom if he’d gone out for a beer run.

“Heey, Pickles – ya wanna take some shats?” they’d offer. “Ya wanna play some Atari?”

There was AJ with the long blond hair who afterwards invited Pickles outside to smoke a joint like nothing at all had happened, and Chaz who liked to kiss first and take off Pickles’ shirt, and Ty who never opened his pretty brown eyes and didn’t know what to do with his hands, and Eric who yanked on Pickles’ hair and came on his face and called him a disgusting slut – a moment which Pickles replayed in his head for weeks and which made him harder than anything he’d ever imagined.

“Ya gatta fackin’ sweer nat ta tell my brother,” Pickles always made sure to say, but he’d discovered that boys were liable to swear just about anything in return for a BJ. And anyway, Seth was sure to find out sooner or later; Pickles knew they’d probably come to blows, but a bloody nose seemed like a small price to pay for the look on Seth’s smug face when he discovered that all his friends were fucking closet cases who’d been getting head from his little brother in his own house, and in some cases on his own _bed._

Seth learned the truth on a Sunday – at Mass, of all places. Pickles had stopped attending church after the fifth or sixth time that he arrived to the service visibly blitzed, and Father Gallagher gently encouraged his parents to leave him at home. So he used Sunday mornings to sleep in, jerk off, and noodle around on his guitar, while Seth dutifully attended Mass – partially because he instinctively understood that his mother’s good graces were the only thing separating him from homelessness, but also because church was a great place to meet sexually pent-up high school girls, even if they _were_ all Catholic.

In the narthex, Seth bumped into Eric, pulling him away from his grandmother to ask in a low voice, “Heey, bro – ya comin’ over fer poker an Tuesdee? Tamarrow’s da first, which means Ty, Ben an’ Jake get deir checks, so we can plee fer, ya know, real fackin’ _money_ dis time.”

“Yeah – totally. Count me in. An’ uh, do ya think Pickles’ll be around?”

Seth raised an eyebrow. “Dood – yer like da third fackin’ person ta ask me dat dis weekend; what da fack is goin’ _an?_ ”

The two brothers shared a common impulsiveness, which in Pickles manifested as a simple tendency towards drug use and self-destruction, but in Seth was tempered by a manipulative streak that provided him with the patience to play the long game where it seemed profitable. And if there was one thing that Seth loved as much as tormenting Pickles, it was turning a profit, and his revenge offered an opportunity for both. He laid out the parameters of his scheme that Tuesday over cigars and a game of poker.

“Dood – are ya fackin’ _serious_ right now?” Chaz had asked him.

“Serious?” Seth laid down his cards. “‘Course I’m fackin’ serious. You’ve all been actin’ like fackin’ dags, so it’s time ta, ya know, start placin’ some _bets._ ”

In hindsight, it should’ve been clear that something had changed by the first weekend in October, when Ty interrupted Pickles mid-fellatio to stammer out an awkward proposition for “ya know, like, actually uh, ya know, _doin’ it,_ ” and then three days later Eric locked his bedroom door and tried to forcibly wrestle Pickles to the floor, which Pickles answered by fracturing Eric’s orbital socket and then letting himself out to walk home alone in the dark.

Halloween arrived on the heels of an unseasonably warm week, and Pickles arrived to the party on 7th and Prospect without a costume, wearing a stained cotton t-shirt and a pair of black board-shorts that seemed ready to fall off his hips no matter how tightly he cinched his belt. The vibrations from the stereo rattled the picture frames on the peeling walls of the old Victorian house, and Pickles shouted a few cursory hellos, asking an acquaintance for directions to the keg, which he found in the kitchen.

“Dood! Pickles!”

Pickles looked up to find Zack holding out a brimming shot glass. He’d always imagined that leaving Tomahawk changed you beyond recognition, and while Zack had traded his Tomahawk High jacket for a UW tee and had recently stopped shaving, he seemed to be otherwise the same person he had been, which Pickles found vaguely disappointing.

“Heey, man. What – uh, what’re ya doin’ here?”

Zack smiled. “Figured if I hung out next ta da keg, ya were bound ta show up sooner er later.”

Pickles eyed the drink, then looked down at his own frothy Solo cup. “I meant: what are ya doin’ in Tamahack?” He took the shot and chased it with a draught of beer. “Did ya miss it dat much, er was caallege jest too hard fer ya?”

Zack laughed and clapped a hand on Pickles’ shoulder. “Hard? It’s fackin’ fun as hell – you’d love it. Nah, I’m jest up here fer da weekend.”

“Oh.” Pickles felt his cheeks burning for no real reason. “Can’t be _dat_ much fun, if ya still wanna come back home fer a lame Halloween party.” He heaved himself up to sit on the kitchen counter.

Zack shrugged, blue eyes watching Pickles over the rim of his cup as he sipped his beer. “Well, I heard ya might be here.”

Pickles didn’t know what to make of that. He felt his heart leap up into his throat, and tried to wash it down with another drink. “Yeah, well. I’m too old fer trick-er-treatin’, an’ Seth’s prably already out somewhere, drunk as fack, wearin’ a hockey-mask an’ tryna fight some kid fer his candy. Where da fack else’m I ganna be?”

“I also hear ya been an somethin’ of a rampage since I left.” Zack gave him a knowing smirk, and Pickles half-expected a nasty comment – instead, Zack only leaned against the counter-top with one hand squarely between Pickles’ knees. Pickles looked up to see if anyone had noticed, but they were alone in the kitchen. “Guess I didn’t know ya needed it dat bad.”

“Well, ya kinda left me hangin’,” Pickles croaked.

“Yeah.” Zack’s shoulder pressed into Pickles’ chest as he reached around him to lift a liquor bottle from the counter. He glanced fleetingly at the label before refilling Pickles’ glass, then smiled and shook his head. “Yeah, dat, uh – it wasn’t, ya know, my _best_ moment. Ain’t ya ever like, had somethin’ jest kinda fall inta yer lap an’ ya like, freeze up an’ don’t even know what ta do with it?”

“No.” Pickles plucked the shot glass from Zack’s hand and downed it with a shudder. “It was a dick move. I –” he paused to check the door before continuing. “All I even did was suck yer cack an’ ya gat all fackin’ _scared_ an’ acted like a big fackin’ –”

 _Pussy,_ he’d have said, if Zack hadn’t kissed him.

Pickles nearly fell off the edge of the counter, but Zack had one hand on his waist, the other on his bare knee; his breath tasted like Budweiser, and he smelled like cheap cologne, which Pickles found weirdly charming.

“I _get_ it,” Zack said as his fingers slid up inside the leg of Pickles’ shorts. “I was a dildo. So let me make it up to ya.”

*

He woke sometime around noon with a merciless headache and the smell of vomit clinging to his hair. Pickles groaned and grabbed for the pillow, hugged it to his chest and rolled onto his side, when someone tore it out of his arms and smacked him hard in the face.

“Oh no ya don’t. Get da fack up, ya fackin’ fairy.”

The sound of Seth’s voice knotted Pickles’ stomach, and his eyes shot open as he lurched over the side of the bed to give a couple violent dry-heaves. Staring at the stained, beige carpet, he realized with a start that this was _Seth’s_ room – that he’d been lying unconscious in Seth’s _bed_ – and suddenly Pickles felt a harrowing sense of empathy for the girls that found themselves in just this position.

He sat up abruptly, wincing as the throbbing in his head quickened. He was relieved to find that he was fully clothed, though the positives of the situation seemed to end there – and his shirt _was_ on backwards. Just beyond the foot of the bed, Seth’s TV crackled with static, and in the chair beside it, Pickles spotted a garbage bag full of Halloween candy.

Seth sat beside him on the mattress, wearing khakis and a polo, his thick brown hair combed neatly back, still damp from a shower. Pickles expected his brother to be angry, but Seth only seemed amused – that goddamn smirk playing at the corner of his lips made Pickles feel instantly afraid.

“Glad ya woke up; I was worried about ya,” Seth said, his tone an unsettling mockery of affection as he considered Pickles with predatory eyes. “Zack said ya gat pretty shit-faced, an’ he was good enough ta bring ya home.”

Pickles clutched at the comforter with sweaty palms. He turned to look at the door, but it was closed, most likely locked. “Why da fack am I in yer bed?”

Seth snorted derisively. “Ya know, nat everyone in da whole town’s tryna fack ya. Can’t I jest, ya know, try an’ take care of my little fackin’ train-wreck of a brother? Ya’d rather I let ya fackin’ choke ta death an yer own puke – fackin’ – break Mam’s heart?” He reached up to grab Pickles by the hair on the back of his neck and gave his brother’s pounding head a rough shake, his breath hot on Pickles’ ear. “Dough da wee ya been actin’ lately, I don’t think anyone’d fackin’ _blame_ me. If I let ya choke an it.”

“Fack you,” Pickles snarled. “Don’t fackin’ touch me.”

Seth’s grip on Pickles’ hair tightened, and he gave hard yank. “Dat’s funny – Eric told me ya _like_ havin’ yer hair pulled.” Pickles grimaced, and Seth considered his brother’s face closely. “Do ya? Are ya gettin’ a hard-an from dis, ya fackin’ faggot?”

Pickles glared at him. He wanted to clock Seth in the mouth, but with Seth holding onto him this way the angle was impossible. “I ain’t a fackin’ _faggot,_ ” he spat.

With his free hand, Seth lifted the remote and aimed it at the television.

Pickles’ heart stopped when he saw the room, the two silhouettes, the messy bed. He watched Zack flick on the light-switch, blue eyes looking straight into the camera for a second before he laid his hands on Pickles’ hips and guided him towards the mattress, closed the door and pulled Pickles’ shirt off over his head while Pickles babbled:

“Jeez, dood – fack – yer fackin’ _serious,_ huh? Oh shit – don’t hate me, but – I ain’t gat a candom er nothin’ –”

Zack set to work on Pickles’ shorts, and Seth gave an admiring whistle. “Da fact dat he gat yer ass fackin’ _naked_ – dat’s nat even part’a da bet. Dat’s jest, ya know, fackin’ _bonus points._ Jest showin’ aff.”

“Bet?” Pickles swallowed and looked away from the screen, suddenly embarrassed for his past self. “What da fack are ya _tackin’_ about?

“Oh! Dat reminds me.” Seth reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled $10 bill, then tossed it onto Pickles’ lap. “Consider dat yer share, dough it’s more’n ya fackin’ _deserve._ ” He smiled, clearly pleased with himself. “Maybe use it ta buy some rubbers next time, huh?”

Pickles stared down at the bill, uncomprehending. The room seemed to tilt slightly to one side, and a bit of bile worked its way up his throat. “What… what da fack, Seth?”

Seth shrugged. “Ya gatta, ya know, work an yer fackin’ business sense, bro. Me, I gat a fackin’ _entrepreneurial spirit,_ an’ if ya wanna act like a fackin’ whore an’ blow all my friends, den I’m ganna – fackin’ – make sure at least _one_ of us gets, ya know, gets some fackin’ _money_ out of it.”

Pickles flinched as the boy on the tape let out a long, needy whine. It had felt so good – at the time – and Zack kept saying it – “Ya feel so fackin’ good, dood. Ya look so fackin’ good like dis” – but in the cold, hard eye of the camera, he just looked really fucking hammered.

“Gad, dood, ya sound like a fackin’ _chick._ ” Seth hit rewind to listen to Pickles moan again. “So anywee, Zack wasn’t plannin’ an comin’ home til Thanksgiving, but when I told him about da bet – an’ told him da stakes was up ta five hundred if he was in – he said he’d fackin’, ya know, come up fer da weekend an’ settle it.” Seeing the look of bewildered anguish on Pickles’ face, he carried on: “So dere was AJ an’ Trent an’ Ty an’ Chaz an’ Ben an’ Jake an’ Eric an’ a couple guys ya don’t know, but Zack seemed pretty confident about it – said he’d have yer cherry an’ da video tape ta prove it in 48 hours er less. An’ ta be feer, _I_ had a little more faith in ya, an’ I said no fackin’ wee would ya be dat easy but… ya know,” he gestured towards the screen. “Here ya are. So tell me again how yer nat a fackin’ faggot.”

Pickles reflected that he had not thought it possible to feel so betrayed by someone he’d never trusted in the first place. “Are you tellin’ me ya sold my – ya charged ‘em fackin’ _fifty dallars each_ ta see who would –” He faltered and clenched his jaw, unable to finish.

Seth waived a hand dismissively. “See, dat’s exactly what I mean. You’d be out dere chargin’ fifty lousy dallars – I charged ‘em a _hundred._ ”

“But you said –”

“I said five hundy fer _Zack._ Wit’ a fifty-fifty split. Five fer him, five fer me. Ya know, ta compensate fer da pain an’ sufferin’ of havin’ my kid brother actin’ like da town cum-dumpster.” Seth grinned and ruffled Pickles’ hair. 

Seth was nineteen – a couple inches taller than Pickles, and heavier, but he lacked Pickles’ talent for going from speechless to ape-shit in a fraction of a second, and the playful gesture tripped the wire in Pickles’ brain that sent him lunging at his brother, tackling Seth awkwardly to the floor where they grappled for half a minute before Pickles came out on top with one knee on either side of Seth’s ribs.

Things got a bit blurry from there. He remembered Seth’s fists, striking him anywhere they could – his thighs and his sides mostly. At some point the television stand toppled over, and Seth’s TV tumbled to the floor – the screen went black and blissfully silent, while Pickles heard his father’s footsteps racing up the stairs, his father’s voice shouting. He remembered Seth’s blood, mixing with his own where he’d cut his knuckles open on Seth’s perfect fucking teeth, the feeling of animal triumph when he saw all that red around Seth’s mouth, even as a pair of police sirens began to wail in the distance. It was beautiful. Dimly, he registered the sound of the lock breaking, four sets of hands on him, lifting him off his brother like he was weightless. The handcuffs felt cold and sharp, and even after the cops had dragged him out of the room, Pickles heard himself screaming, “Fack you! Fack you! Don’t you ever fackin’ touch me!”


	3. The Video

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pickles goes to Offdensen for damage control.

When he wanted to rankle Offdensen, Pickles had discovered almost nothing as effective as the word “dad” – “Yeah, okee, _Dad_ ” or “Fine, _Dad,_ whatever you see.” But however much he outwardly resisted their CFO’s guidance, Pickles took great comfort in the knowledge that there was someone in the universe whose sole purpose seemed to be protecting him from the consequences of his own terrible choices. And unlike his real father, Charles never judged you for the trouble you got into – never called you a disappointment or a drunk, or told you that you belonged in a garbage can.

This was not to say that Pickles didn’t find Offdensen intimidating at times, especially times like these, when he walked into that cavernous office and sat in the chair in front of Charles’ colossal mahogany desk and fidgeted like a child sitting in front of the school principal.

“I, uh – sarry ta bather ya, chief, but…” Pickles looked desperately for something to busy his hands, but Charles kept his workspace unfortunately free of clutter. He settled for drumming his fingers on the edge of the desk. “I gat kind of a prablem.”

Charles only looked at him expectantly.

“It’s, uh – about my brother.” Pickles cleared his throat and looked around. “Ya don’t have like, _another_ affice, do ya? Like, a super _secret_ affice where ya go ta deal with all da _extra_ facked-up shit?”

“No,” Charles lied. Still, for someone capable of no more than three distinct facial expressions, Offdensen was adept at reading people, and he leaned back in his chair to open a drawer and ask, “Would you, ah, care for a glass of scotch? I was just about to have one myself.”

Pickles guessed _that_ was a lie too, seeing as it was only just noon, but he nodded anyway. “Yeah,” he said with an uneasy smile. “I been feelin’ a little dehydrated todee.”

He’d recently noticed that Charles kept a weighted tumbler amongst his glasses – the bottom thicker than all the others – and that this was the glass he always used when pouring for Pickles. He’d thought to complain about it, but Offdensen only ever drank top-shelf stuff, so Pickles decided it all evened out in the end.

“So,” said Charles, laying down a coaster and sliding Pickles a drink, “What is this, ah, _extra_ fucked-up shit?”

Pickles took a sniff of the scotch before swallowing a mouthful. “Well, ya know my brother’s a Grade-A piece’a shit fackin’ dildo scumbeeg, right?”

“I can see why you’d say that.”

“An’ when we were kids, he used ta – he did some kinda facked-up shit to me. Like, aside from da usual – ya know – physical violence an’ caallin’ me a faggot an’ all.”

Offdensen shifted uncomfortably. “Pickles, I know you’ve, ah, thrown that chair across the room the past couple times I’ve suggested this, but –”

“No.” Pickles shook his head. “Fack you. I ain’t goin’ to a fackin’ shrink.”

“Talk therapy is not the same as –”

Pickles finished his drink and slammed the empty glass down hard on the desk. He saw a flash of anger in Offdensen’s eyes, but it passed as quickly as lightning. “Gaddammit, Charlie – ya think I’m in here ‘cause I jest really need ta tack about my _feelin’s_ ta somebody dat ain’t even _gat_ none?” He registered the cruelty of the remark as soon as it left his mouth, but carried on without apology. “I’m tryna _tell_ ya dat I gat a prablem – like, da kind dat’s yer jab ta _fix._ ”

A tense silence filled the room. Pickles regretted his decision to come here, and was just about to stand up and leave when Charles reached out to refill his glass. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m listening.”

Pickles drank more slowly this time, feeling the creeping burn of the liquor and staring into his cup before beginning, “My brother has a video of me.” His eyes darted up just long enough to catch the frown on Offdensen’s face.

“What kind of video?”

“Um – ya know.” Pickles felt himself blushing, which he hated. “Like a sex teep.”

“I see.” Pickles could almost _hear_ the gears in the CFO’s head begin turning. “And presumably he intends to blackmail you with it?”

“Yeah – Seth’s fackin’ predictable like dat.”

“Did he say what he wants?”

“Nope.” Pickles smiled humorlessly. “Jest wanted ta remind me dat he has it.”

Charles sighed. He removed his glasses and folded them carefully before laying them on the desk, then leaned back in his chair to think. Pickles finished his drink and quietly helped himself to another. He reflected that he needed something harder than alcohol, and wondered idly what Charles did to unwind, if anything.

Offdensen looked at him seriously, his voice carefully measured. “I know it much be, ah, upsetting for you to have a family member violate your privacy like this, but – this isn’t new territory for us. We’ve got an entire team in our PR department dedicated to managing the impact of compromising photos and videos. Skwisgaar’s had over a dozen sex tapes end up in the press, and we’ve managed to not only control the damage, but to actually acquire the distribution rights. Did you know that his three-volume nursing-home compilation has sold more copies on DVD than _The Matrix?_ ”

Pickles stared at him. “No. I mean, yeah – I knew dat. Murderface owns like, three capies. But like, no – dis video dat Seth’s gat – it can’t get out. Like, never. I’ll give him whatever, but… I don’t trust him ta destroy it.”

“Fair enough.” Charles replaced his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose and asking, “Do _you_ have a copy of this video?”

Pickles thought about lying, but lying was exhausting – and anyway, Charles always knew when you were lying, so there wasn’t really much point. “If I say I do, yer ganna make me show ya, huh?”

“I’d prefer to know what we’re working with,” Offdensen replied, softening his tone ever-so-slightly to add, “I’m not going to _make_ you show me anything, but I am going to _ask_ you to trust me.”

Pickles considered, squinting at Charles for a few seconds before pulling the DethPhone from his pocket, biting his lip as he thumbed through his inbox. He hesitated before handing it over. “Jest – jest you, dough, okee? Nobody else. No PR department er nothin’.”

Charles nodded. “Of course.”

“Oh, an’ try nat ta get a boner.” Pickles cringed at his own lame joke, and Offdensen looked mortified.

Watching Charles watch the video was even worse than he imagined – sort of like listening to someone read the most pathetic page of your diary aloud. Having never actually seen the entire video, Pickles forgot the worst part of that night – that he’d been drunk on an empty stomach, and getting fucked turned out to be a lot like off-roading in a truck with no shocks.

“Oh _shit,_ dood – I think I’m ganna –” he had managed, just before he threw up all over the bed, the wall and himself.

Pickles flinched at the sound of his own retching, and Charles stopped the video. He turned the phone over in his hands for a moment. Pickles had seen Offdensen exasperated before – even angry, on a couple of occasions – but now, underneath that stony expression, Pickles saw something that frightened him.

_I’m sarry,_ he wanted to say, _It was a mistake,_ but the cold fury that radiated off of Charles left Pickles in a petrified silence.

“How old were you when this was made?” Offdensen asked finally.

“Old enough to know better,” Pickles replied, slouching down in his chair, staring at the smudge his lips had left on the rim of the glass.

“Answer my question.”

“Sixteen.”

Charles’ eyes rolled upward as he did the math. “Fifteen years ago. And did you – were you aware that you were being recorded?”

“Well, I mean – ya can prably tell I wasn’t _aweer_ ’a very fackin’ much dat night. But no. Nobody ever – uh, asked me er told me er nothin’. I didn’t find out til Seth showed me it da next dee. Tat it was real fackin’ funny.”

“And the boy who – the other boy in the tape – how old was he?”

Pickles shrugged, feeling a little interrogated. “I dunno. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. One’a Seth’s friends.”

“Do you know his last name? Where he is now?”

“Zack Keller. He drapped out after his first year at Eau Claire. Prably gat a couple facked-up kids an’ a wife dat he cheats an with other guys in da bathroom of da gas station dat he prably still works at in Tamahack. Look, Charlie, I don’t really give a fack about him. I jet want da video gone.”

“Consider it done.”

Pickles blinked in disbelief at the simplicity of the answer. “Really?”

“Hmm.” Charles licked his lips, considering. “And ah, what would you like to do with Seth?”

“Do with him? I mean, I’d _like_ ta choke him ta death with my bare hands and throw his corpse into a giant tank’a piranhas an’ watch it disappear.” Pickles gave a dry smirk and finished his fourth glass of scotch. “But why’d ya ask?”

“Unfortunately, the statute of limitations on – on what happened to you has most likely passed. But by sending this to you, Seth is guilty of distributing child pornography, and could be –”

Pickles stood up too fast, and the blood rushed from his head. The tumbler fell to the floor, intact, and before he could think, he’d lunged across the desk to snatch his phone from Charles’ fingers. “Fack you! It ain’t – it ain’t like dat! It ain’t fackin’ _kiddie porn,_ okee? I was – fackin’ Jesus – I was a fackin’ _teenager_ – nat some fackin’ little kid dat didn’t know what I was doin’!” If anyone _else_ had said those words to him, Pickles would’ve laid them out cold; and while he doubted Charles would ever hit him back, he knew the CFO was like a fucking quadruple jiu-jitsu blackbelt sensei or some shit, so he restrained himself and only stood there, shaking.

“Pickles.” Charles said his name softly and waited for Pickles’ eyes to refocus, for his breathing to slow. “You’re right – you _were_ a teenager. And whatever we call what happened, that’s up to you. The important thing is that I could have Seth put away. For a very long time. If you want.”

Seth in prison – where he _belonged._ Not like he hadn’t been there before. And their parents could take out a second mortgage to buy the best lawyer in Wisconsin, but it wouldn’t matter. Whoever they got wouldn’t stand a chance against the Dethklok legal team – against _Charles._ If it ever went to trial – which seemed unlikely – well, good luck finding a jury that didn’t include at least eight hardcore Dethklok fans. And maybe then their mother wouldn’t be so fucking quick to tell everyone about how _well_ her eldest had done for himself – _“Ooh, my Sethy’s a registered sex-offender,”_ she’d have to say. There was just one problem…

Pickles scratched at the back of his neck. “Would anyone else have ta watch da teep?”

“Yes.”

“Den no.” Seeing that Charles intended to argue with him, he closed his eyes and shook his head. “You – ya don’t understand. I – Nate _can’t_ find out about dis.”

Offdensen didn’t bother trying to hide his frown. Though he’d never explicitly said so, Pickles knew their CFO disapproved of his relationship with Nathan. Nate waived it off – “He just doesn’t want us fucking up the band” – but Pickles suspected that Charles’ disapproval had at least as much to do with a belief that Pickles was getting the better end of their arrangement. (An assessment with which Pickles agreed.)

“I thought you’d, ah, decided to be more open with Nathan.”

Pickles shrugged again, like Charles wasn’t asking him to go against three decades of lessons learned and instinct. “I did. I mean, I _am._ More open. Dan I was. I been, ya know, _hanest._ About stuff. Most stuff. But, bein’ open with him doesn’t mean I gatta tell him every fackin’ _thing_ dat ever happened in my life, reet?”

“Well, no, but –”

“An’ anything dat happened between me an’ my brother – I jest wanna keep him far da fack away from it, okee?”

“Pickles, what happened on that tape… it wasn’t consensual. Nathan won’t hold it against you.”

“It _was,_ dough.” Pickles smirked as he bent to pick up the tumbler from the rug. “An’ anywee, I’m nat worried about Nate’n holdin’ it against me. Ya know da guy – he thinks I’m a lat better’n I am. I jest – ya only get ta have so many issues before people start figurin’ out yer more trouble dan yer worth. If dat means nothin’ happens ta Seth, den whatever.” He set the glass carefully on the coaster on top of Charles’ desk. “An’ don’t think I don’t notice dis bullshit weighted glass.”

“You’ve told me that you find moderation difficult,” Charles replied. “I’m just trying to, ah, make it a little easier.”

Pickles scowled. “Whatever, _Dad._ Ya wanna help me? Jest make da fackin’ video disappear, okee?”


	4. What About Murder?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathan tries to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now without fucking drafting errors. Holy balls.
> 
> Thanks, ya lovely dildos!

_1999…_

They’d been playing together for almost two years when Seth showed up to a gig in LaCrosse, fresh out of prison and drunk on Jaeger, buying shots for any girl that looked too young to buy them for herself. Four years had passed since Pickles last saw his brother at the Ministry Sacred Heart ER, wheeling past him on a gurney while Pickles asked the receptionist when he could expect to see someone about his hand. Nathan had never felt as strongly about _anyone_ as Pickles did about Seth, and he didn’t understand yet that while Pickles might swear up and down that he’d never speak to that motherfucker again – (“It’s over,” he’d say, “I’m fackin’ _done,_ ” like Seth was an ex-lover instead of some douchebag nobody relative from Nowhere) – it was only a matter of time before Seth inevitably resurfaced, like a shark scenting blood, and the same fucked-up history that compelled Pickles to smash his brother’s head through the window of the Tomahawk Applebee’s also compelled him to pay Seth’s medical bills afterward.

It wasn’t till several nights later that Pickles thought to wonder whether Seth meant to see _his_ band at all. It wasn’t like he kept his brother up-to-date on his creative endeavors, but Bayou of Blood _did_ have a website – (well-curated by then-guitarist Dave, a music school drop-out whose playing style could only be described as “precise”) – and that website _did_ feature a photo of the band – Nathan, Pickles, William and Dave – along with a brief bio of each, which surely appeared whenever anyone (Seth) googled “Pickles + Tomahawk, WI” or “Pickles + Snakes n Barrels,” or even just “Pickles the Drummer,” so it wasn’t beyond the reach of possibility that Seth had simply been waiting for his brother’s new band to play somewhere nearby. After all, Pickles was always good for a few bucks or a few drinks, and Seth had never been above leveraging his little brother’s celebrity for a bit of easily-impressed small-town pussy.

That night in LaCrosse, one particular asshole stood out amidst the sea of black t-shirts in his khakis and a baby-blue polo, wearing slicked-back hair and a soul-patch that Murderface zeroed in on with all the lispy derision of a loser who’s spotted an even bigger loser.

“Hey guysch – check out thisch bag of dicksch. Looksch like he wandered out of a porno schponschored by JC Penney.”

Nathan and Dave laughed, and Pickles looked up from adjusting his cymbals to ask, “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Nate said with smile. “Just this dildo at the bar who’s really scraping the bottom of the jailbait barrel.”

Pickles, who loved a laugh at another man’s expense as much as any other jack-off, scanned the bar for this unfortunate piece shit, then froze, his sharp grin vanishing as he choked, “Oh. Fack.”

“Dude – you know that guy?”

Pickles said nothing, but stood there dumbfounded as if he’d fallen under a spell.

“Pickles?”

Nate had never been particularly literate when it came to reading people, and the subtleties of things like posture and vocal inflection often passed him by. But Pickles was different – he’d stuck around long enough for Nathan to puzzle out which of his little smirks meant condescension or amusement or lust – and when he told Pickles that he heard voices – had heard them as long as he could remember – Pickles only opened another beer and asked with great interest, “Well, what do dey tell ya?” The voices _concerned_ themselves with Pickles, which was unusual. _Fire,_ they named him sometimes, so Nathan learned to think of him that way – as a person who sometimes needed tending, needed fuel and attention, and sometimes just needed to be left the fuck alone. Now, he sensed Pickles wavering and unsteady. Nathan frowned and passed his hand in front of Pickles’ unblinking eyes.

“Uh – dude?”

“Maybe he’sch in love,” Murderface teased, not looking up from his tuner.

Nathan growled. He knew Will was just being a fuckhead, but even the suggestion of it stirred up an unpleasant feeling in Nathan’s guts. A surly warning from the stage-manager broke Pickles’ trance, and he began fiddling with his drum throne in a determined effort to keep his eyes down.

As the house lights dimmed, Nate squinted into the crowd, searching for the dick with the polo shirt, and discovered that he’d made his way towards the stage and now stood leaned against the wall beside speaker stack with one arm around a girl, shouting something in her ear. His other arm pointed straight at Pickles, who was double-fisting a pair of clear plastic cups filled with what looked like straight vodka while he sound-checked his bass pedals one last time.

He played aggressively that night, the din of the drums like a rockslide that surrounded Nathan and all but drowned out Dave and Murderface. He broke a skin halfway through the set and had to stop to swap out the floor tom, and Nate didn’t miss the way Pickles’ hands shook as he adjusted the tension before launching back into that same fill as if nothing had happened. The sound was heavy, and Nathan loved the feeling of the drums rattling his bones, though he was beginning to hear why Pickles had been needling the rest of them to audition a second guitarist before they wasted any more money on recording.

“So why don’t you double-up in the studio and play rhythm?” Nate had asked him, “At least until we can find someone permanent.”

“Nuh-uh.” Pickles shook his head. “No wee. I ain’t fackin’ with guitar anymore. I jest wanna stee in da back – fackin’ – jest fackin’ exorcise some demons.” He smiled and shrugged. “It’s what I’m fackin’ made for.”

Nathan couldn’t argue – the first time he’d heard Pickles play the drums, he felt like he’d been hit in the face with a pillowcase full of doorknobs. Still, he remembered the night he came home early from his shift as a bouncer at a local biker bar, and heard the sound of an unplugged guitar and Pickles’ voice softly singing:

_Outside it’s cold but inside it’s a storm_  
I swore I’d never come this way  
I swore I’d never see the day  
But cold girls’ll fuck anything that’s warm 

He’d listened for almost a minute before Pickles noticed him standing there in the doorway and stopped abruptly, his freckled cheeks flaring red, more like a teenager caught plucking in his bedroom than a man who’d played sold-out arena shows on five continents.

“Keep going,” Nate told him. “Or I’ll tell everyone that I caught you playing unplugged and singing like a total pussy.”

Other people usually made Nathan feel tense and unmoored, but he liked being alone with Pickles. There was Pickles the Drummer, of course, who popped pills like candy, got into fistfights and threesomes with equal frequency, and played the drums hard and fast as a fucking hurricane, who made Nate feel like anything was possible. But there was also just _Pickles,_ who acted affectionate when he smoked weed, could tell you the history of any old-school arcade game, loved cinnamon buns, and had a beautiful singing voice when he thought no-one was listening. _That_ Pickles made Nathan feel like nothing really mattered, but in a good way.

Nate didn’t know _what_ to make of the version of his friend that appeared that night in LaCrosse. He’d watched Pickles cold-cock dudes twice his size, but now – in the parking-lot after the show – he stood there with this skinny asshole’s arm around his shoulder, hunched over on himself like a beaten dog in need of rescue. The douchebag in the khakis leaned in close to whisper in Pickles’ ear, and something in Nathan that had up until that moment remained safely submerged came rushing up to the surface.

“Dude – let’s go. We’ve got to be in Minneapolis tomorrow.”

Pickles opened his mouth to say something, but the fuckwad with the soul-patch interrupted him to slur, “Ain’t ya ganna _introduce_ me, li’l bro?”

Nathan blinked. It was obvious, all of a sudden. This dildo was taller, with brown hair and better teeth, his smirk more shit-eating than impish, but they shared the same green eyes, the arched eyebrows, the thin build and the handsome profile.

Pickles looked sick and mumbled when he spoke: “Nate’n – dis is my brother, Seth.”

Seth looked Nathan up and down, one hand playing with Pickles’ dreads, the other lifting a brimming cup of beer to his lips. “Typical,” he said, then poked a finger at Nathan’s chest. “You guys oughtta come up ta Eau Claire. I could, ya know, book a venue up dere. I know everyone in dat scene, ya know – club-owners an’ promoters an’ shit. Ya wanna like, make dis tour fackin’ prafitable, ya gatta stap in Eau Claire. Cut me in, and ya could consider me like, ya know, yer fackin’ regional manager er whatever.”

Nate waited for Pickles to tell his brother to fuck off, mind his own business, they already had two shows lined up in the Twin Cities, but Pickles only stared at his own toes, catatonic, while Seth went on about all the shitty little towns Bayou of Blood _had_ to play if they ever wanted to, ya know, get fackin’ noticed.

“Why don’t ya jest like, tell ‘em who ya _are_ an’ stap actin’ like some fackin’ nobody?” He held Pickles tighter, and said to Nathan, “Didja know dat? Didja know my little brother’s already fackin’ _famous?_ Fackin’ – ya know dat one sang, ‘Cold Girls?’ Fackin’ Number 3 for six weeks? Betcha didn’t know dat sang was about me.”

* * *

“What makes you think something’s wrong with Pickles?”

Nate fidgeted uncomfortably. He hated chairs – they always seemed to be made for someone smaller. He also hated when Charles played dumb like this – like it wasn’t always totally obvious when something was wrong with Pickles, and like Nathan wasn’t the person most likely to notice. “There just _is,_ okay?”

He didn’t feel like explaining it. Not that Charles didn’t already know about the two of them, but Nathan could only imagine how gay it would sound coming out of his mouth in words.

_I took a video of him on my phone. Not even a dirty video, just – like a stupid little video of him not even doing anything. And he fucking freaked out on me._

“Freaked out” would’ve been an understatement anyway; “had a panic-induced asthma-attack” might’ve been more accurate.

“Dood – what da fack is _dis?_ ” 

When Nate left to take a post-coital piss, Pickles splayed himself out on the bed, looking like a hot mess the way he always did right afterward – dreadlocks a sweaty tangle, jizz splattered across his stomach, and that lazy, well-fucked grin spreading across his face as he watched Nathan’s naked ass leave the room. Now, sixty seconds later, he sat bolt upright, one hand tugging at the sheets to cover himself, the other clutching Nathan’s phone while he stared at the screen in shock. Nate’s guts lurched, and he hurried through an inventory of possible incriminating things Pickles might’ve come across – some really vanilla gay porn, maybe, or that dick-pick he’d taken and sent to Murderface as a joke.

But when he sat down beside Pickles to get a look, Pickles rebuffed the arm around his waist with a hard elbow to Nate’s ribs. “Fack you. Don’t touch me like dat right now.”

“Well at least let me _see_ what’s got your fucking panties in a knot,” Nathan growled, trying not to let on how badly the blow actually hurt.

Pickles turned the phone towards him, held it just out of reach, and without his glasses, Nate had to squint to see the screen. “What, that? That’s just a – just a stupid video I took. It’s like thirty seconds long.”

Pickles scowled at him. “ _When?_ ” he demanded. “ _When_ did ya take dis?”

“Last week?”

“ _Why?_ ”

Nathan blinked at him. It was pathetic, he knew, and kind of faggy to take a video of Pickles sleeping, but he didn’t understand why Pickles was so upset. Not like the whole world hadn’t seen him passed out – at press conferences and parties and that one show in Montreal. And anyway, Nathan had _meant_ to delete the file days ago, but every time he tried, he just ended up watching it again.

“Because you – you were bass-pedaling in your sleep,” he offered.

“An’ _what?_ ” Pickles cleared his throat. “Ya tat it was fackin’ funny and wanted ta show someone?”

The accusation caught Nate by surprise. The idea of _sharing_ the video had never occurred to him. “No,” he replied. “Just thought it was – just thought it was fucking metal is all.”

But none of that was Charles’ business, so Nathan folded his arms across his chest and waited.

Offdensen frowned, searching for the combination of words that would not (directly) violate his promise of confidentiality. “Supposing there _is_ something wrong – what would you like me to do about it?”

“What about murder?”

“What _about_ it?”

Nathan gripped the edges of the chair and tried to pull it forward, which made a grating noise against the hardwood floor. Charles cringed, and Nate asked, “Could we – I – um, have someone murdered? Like, for a good reason?”

Charles held back a smile. He’d lost count of how many lives he’d taken to maintain Dethklok’s safety and success, but still, he found it sweet that Nathan would ask.

“Hypothetically,” he replied, though he’d sent Toki and Murderface away with a perfunctory “no” when they’d asked the same question. “Whose murder are we discussing?”

“Pickles’ brother, Seth.”

“I see.” Charles pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose to peer incisively at Nathan. “And what makes you so sure that Seth is the cause of Pickles’ ah, _mood?_ ”

“I can delete it, okay?” Nathan had said. “Just give me the fucking phone back and I’ll delete it right now.”

But Pickles clung to the phone insistently, his eyes watering, fingers shaking, and his breathing had become a reedy rasp. “Dood, ya keen’t – ya keen’t jest fackin’ – fackin’ video people in deir _sleep,_ okee? It’s nat – yer nat even s’posed ta stee da _night,_ remember? An’ dis is _why._ Ya let people stee da night, an’ –” he paused to give a few dry coughs, “An’ dey take fackin’ videos, and den dey – dey act like dey fackin’ own you.”

_Fuck you,_ Nathan wanted to say, but Pickles had begun wheezing, pawing at his chest with one hand while his face darkened. 

“Where’s your inhaler?”

“Bathroom,” Pickles managed, pointing with the hand that still clutched the phone. “Drawer.”

Nate found it there beneath the sink, along with a pair of syringes and a few boxes of Plan B. He handed it to Pickles. “I don’t know what to do,” he said uselessly, then stood there, watching as Pickles took a gasping hit of albuterol, then another.

Pickles had apologized to him when he finally recovered his breath. Leaned back against the headboard, looking up towards the ceiling, Pickles let out another dry cough and wiped a stray tear from his cheek. “Fack – I’m sarry I’m such a paranoid asshole.” He glanced at the phone lying on sheets.

Nathan picked it up and looked at the screen. They’d been in his bed that night, and Pickles fell asleep with the leather cuffs still on his wrists, feet tapping out a beat on the mattress. Nate looked back at Pickles, face still flushed, lips a little purple.

He deleted the file. “Don’t worry about it. It’s gone.”

Hiding behind a curtain of black hair, Nathan shrugged and grumbled, “I can just tell when it has to do with his family. And Seth – he like, _did_ something to Pickles. Like, I don’t know _what,_ exactly, but it fucked him up and it _keeps on_ fucking him up, and I – um, basically I just want Seth dead, okay?”

Some sort of revelation played out across Charles’ features, and Nathan worried that he’d been caught out. Showing or verbalizing any sort of emotional investment was against Pickles’ rules – besides just being not fucking metal – and Nate realized belatedly that saying he wished Pickles’ shitty brother was dead was probably tantamount to saying that he loved Pickles and thought of him as a boyfriend. But whatever Charles thought, he only asked,

“And do you think _Pickles_ wants him dead?”

Nate grimaced. “I – I don’t know,” he admitted. “Probably not.” As an only child, sibling relationships baffled him. He could’ve sworn Pickles planned on beating Seth fatally at his own wedding reception – still remembered the way Pickles kept swinging even when Nathan pulled him off – and then the next day offered his brother six-hundred thousand dollars a year (plus benefits) to head up Dethklok Australia just because he felt _guilty_ about it. Families were incomprehensible enough without siblings.

Charles sighed. “Believe it or not, Nathan, I also find Seth, ah, loathsome. But I can’t have him killed unless he either forces my hand, or unless Pickles asks me to do it himself.” He paused before adding, “For what it’s worth, though, I ah, appreciate the sentiment. And I know Pickles does too.”


	5. Terms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathan tells Seth how it's going to be, and Seth thinks about how it is.

Seth almost never wore pants, if he could get away with it, and this morning’s meeting was no exception. Explosion either forgot about the time difference or didn’t care, and Seth was going to be damned if he’d crawl out of bed at 3am for a teleconference _and_ put on pants.

Amber didn’t stir as he threw the sheets back and sat up on the edge of the mattress, and for a second he resented her slumbering form – curled up on her side, facing away from him, dead to the world. Since their son was born, it seemed like Amber hardly left the bed. Seth supposed this was normal, and he knew that it made his own life easier, since they had a staff of three to keep JR clothed, fed and happy. Still, seeing the stack of old Cosmos pile up beside the bed, the waste-basket overflowing with tissue and wrappers, the ashtray full of menthol-lights – it made him feel like a failure somehow, and so naturally he resented her.

“Come an, babe – let’s watch da fackin’ world burn,” he’d said when the riots first started, pulling her close as they looked out the bay window of their beachfront mansion, fortified now with land- and sea-mines, motion-activated death-rays, and a forest of razor-wire.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I’m ganna go lie down with JR.”

Honestly though, at least _Pickles_ would’ve appreciated the sight of Sydney in flames. On the night that Seth set fire to the family’s garage – payback for being sent to his room for swearing – he’d turned to look at his brother’s face and saw there something approaching rapture. Standing across the street in their pajamas, bathed in the glow of the flames and the fire-engine lights, Seth felt for the first time that he and Pickles _understood_ one another, and for a fleeting, weird moment, he was excited to show his little brother the whole shitty world.

“Pretty wicked, huh?”

Pickles nodded, his eyes following the billowing black smoke up into the sky. “Yeah.”

Seth hadn’t intended to blame Pickles for the incident, at least not until the words were already coming out of his mouth, but then, Seth rarely _intended_ to do anything until he was already in the midst of it. He never did understand how his parents failed to guess the truth; Pickles had been a sweet kid up until that point – always saying _please_ and _thank you,_ playing nicely with the neighbor kids, and just generally making Seth look like an asshole. 

He remembered coming home from school early one afternoon to hear his parents arguing, heard his father say something about Pickles’ hair, about where the fuck did that hair even come from.

“I’m da one who – fackin’ – burned it down. Ya know – burned down da garage,” he’d confessed once when he was lit. “Blamed it an Pickles, but ya know, it was me dat did it.”

 

“Dat’s facked up, babe,” Amber had replied. “No wonder he’s such a train-wreck.”

Seth huffed. _Pickles the Train-Wreck._ It was true that Pickles never needed any help getting into trouble after that. Every time his brother came home in the back of a squad car, Seth pretended not to listen to their father’s stony voice, ordering Pickles to his bedroom the same way you might tell a tiresome dog to go lie down, while their mother sighed and said, “Hanestly, it’s like ya enjoy gettin’ cat.” (Seth never understood why Pickles got off so easy, while Calvert screamed himself hoarse when Seth got expelled one year for fighting.) But if Pickles never needed help getting into trouble, he also never needed help getting out of Tomahawk.

On the day he left, Seth had come after him, jogging down the street until he caught up. It was an evening in early spring, and Seth hadn’t thought to grab a coat as he ran out of the house after his brother.

“Dood – where ya ganna go?”

Pickles, who had always dressed like an idiot, looked likewise cold in his leather jacket and jeans, his cheeks and ears a deep red, his breath coming out in short white puffs. “Los Angeles,” he replied.

“L.A.? Where da fack didja get da money ta go ta L.A.?”

“None’a yer fackin’ business.” 

Seth’s head swam. _“Soon as I turn eighteen, I’m fackin’ outta here,”_ Pickles had always said, and Seth told him, _“Fine. I bet Mam and Dad can’t fackin’ **wait.** ”_ But eighteen was a long ways off still, and now Pickles was leaving, like – who the fuck did he think he was? You couldn’t just _leave_ like this.

“Well, what’re ya ganna do in L.A.? Ya like, don’t even _know_ anyone.”

“I’m ganna _do_ whatever I _want,_ ” said Pickles. “I’m ganna drink an’ stee out late. I’m ganna start a beend, and it’s ganna be fackin’ huge. An’ I’m never even ganna _think_ about you, er Mam er Dad, er dis stupid little town again.”

“More like you’ll end up suckin’ dick jest ta pay da rent.”

Pickles said nothing and quickened his pace.

“Yer my little brother, an’ I fackin’ _love you._ But I – ya gatta know dis is fackin’ stupid, reet? Yer sixteen an’ ya ain’t never even been to a city bigger’n Madison.

Still nothing.

“Yer ganna get fackin’ _eaten alive,_ ” Seth tried again, and made the mistake of grabbing the shoulder of his brother’s jacket.

Pickles spun and decked Seth in the mouth, hard enough to send him staggering, and when he pressed his fingers to his lip, they came away with blood. He wondered where his little brother had learned to hit like that. Pickles stared at him, one hand still clenched into a fist while the other clung to the strap of his backpack. 

“I told ya nat ta fackin’ touch me,” he said. Then his expression softened a shade and he added, “An’ anywee, ya gat what ya wanted – I’m fackin’ gone, an’ it’ll be like I was never dere. So stap fallowin’ me like a fackin’ last dag an’ go da fack home.”

“Dood –” Seth spit a bloody wad onto the sidewalk and wiped at his mouth with the collar of his shirt. He considered his brother. Pickles looked new to him then – all at once young and grown up, and suddenly the whole neighborhood around them seemed drab and dull in contrast, the idea of going the fuck home to that house – _their_ house – stifling. _Don’t,_ Seth wanted to say. _Ya can’t._ “Fack you,” he said instead. “I hope ya fackin’ die out dere.”

But Pickles must’ve known that he didn’t mean it, because he only smirked. “I’d rather die out dere dan live here.” His eyes drifted towards the drug store, where a rusted red pick-up sat idling. He waved at the driver – a cute girl in a baseball cap that Seth didn’t recognize – and re-shouldered his pack.

“Who’s dat?” Seth asked.

“Dat’s my ride to da bus stop in Eau Claire.” Pickles paused before stepping off the curb. He chewed on his lip and looked at his shoes – a stolen pair of black-on-black Chucks – and Seth had never wanted to strangle anyone so badly. He’d better stop looking at his shoes like that if he wanted to last five fucking seconds in Los Angeles.

Pickles didn’t make eye contact when he said, “Listen, dood – don’t try an’ find me, okee?” then turned his back and crossed the street, lifting his middle finger to flip Seth the bird over his shoulder. “An’ have a nice life, ya fackin’ douchebeeg.” Seth didn’t need to see his brother’s face to know that he was smiling.

*

Anymore, Pickles always had that dumbass wasted grin on his face, but Nathan Explosion might as well have been carved out of the world’s grumpiest-looking rock; Seth never knew the singer to smile, but he was especially unsmiling this morning, and Seth reflected that it was just like his brother to glom onto the biggest, surliest alpha he could find.

“Mornin’, Nate.” Seth sat back in his recliner, balancing the laptop on his bare thigh while he reached for his mug of Irish coffee. He blew across the top of it, taking a tentative sip before asking, “What keen Dethklok Australia do fer ya?”

“This uh, isn’t about Dethklok.”

Seth arched an eyebrow and tilted his screen forward. He’d seen enough of Mordhaus to know that Nathan was not in the conference room, or the lounge, or Offdensen’s office. “Okee – well den what keen _I_ do fer ya?”

“It’s about Pickles.”

_Oh fack,_ Seth thought, _He’s fackin’ **dead,**_ and immediately wondered about the financial implications. _What happens to his rights?_ he was about to ask, when Nathan continued:

“I know what you did to him.”

Seth’s brain came to a grinding halt, and for a long moment he felt as if he’d been turned upside-down – his heart and his stomach seemed to have traded places, and a thin film of sweat began to form on the palms of his hands and the back of his neck as he fought the urge to simply close the computer and claim technical malfunction until he could better compose himself. He didn’t often feel nervous, and had to swallow twice before replying, “Yer ganna have ta be more specific.” He willed his lips into a smirk. “Brothers do a lat’a facked-up shit to each other.”

As usual, Seth’s humor failed to penetrate Explosion’s thick fucking skull, because he only answered seriously: “No, I don’t _have_ to be more specific. We both _know_ what I’m talking about, and I don’t want to go into any more fucking detail about it.”

Seth considered the possibility that Nathan was bluffing, which seemed likely. He knew that Pickles thought of Nate as his closest friend, that Nate probably made Pickles feel safe, and that Pickles probably wanted to fuck him – if he hadn’t already – because Pickles was a hopeless slut like that; but he also knew that his brother’s fear of vulnerability overpowered almost all of his other drives (almost to the point of paranoia) and that a practiced indifference to one another’s fucked-up personal circumstances was foundational to Dethklok’s continued success. And there were some things you just didn’t fucking talk about. Whatever Explosion knew – or thought he knew – Seth decided to neither confirm nor deny.

“Okee, so if ya don’t wanna tack about what a drunk, deviant basket-case my brother is –”

“Stop.” Nathan’s image quaked for a moment as his fist slammed onto the corner of his laptop. “Ugh. Jesus. You really are the biggest fucking dildo in the world. Just shut up for half a fucking second and let me finish a fucking thought, alright? I’m talking to you because from now on, I want you to go through me or Charles whenever you’ve got business with the band. Don’t bother Pickles anymore with your bullshit – you need money or whatever? Talk to one of us. If you’re just lonely and need to commiserate with someone about what a complete asshole you are, call me. Or Murderface. Or your fucking parents. But if you call Pickles – or text him, or write him, fucking, carrier pigeon, whatever – I will personally fly down there and rip your guts out through your mouth.”

A strange numbness took hold of Seth, and he tasted the sourness of bile climbing the back of his throat. He waited for Nathan to ask if he got it, if he understood, to add some qualifiers or conditions, but the singer seemed to have concluded his thoughts, and now he stared at Seth through the monitor, those uncanny green eyes boring into him. Seth remembered how it felt that evening when he returned to the house, and everything was the same, but quieter somehow – _wrong_ – and how he wanted to run back outside and stop Pickles from getting into that truck and beat him fucking unconscious and drag him back home where he belonged, but instead he just went up to his bedroom and smoked weed until he fell asleep.

“Let me at least – fackin’ – let me tell him he won’t be hearin’ from me,” Seth said after a moment, and when he saw Nathan’s lips curl into the beginnings of a _fuck you,_ he added, “Ya know how anxious he gets.”

Nate gave a low growl. “ _Fine._ ‘Hey Pickles – sorry I’m a douchebag and a shitty brother. I won’t bother you anymore.’ You can say that. But no weird shit. No asking for shit. Do you think you can handle that?”

It stung being spoken to like a child by this fucking Neanderthal, but Seth had enough sense to remember where his paycheck came from, so he only nodded. “Sure thing.” He went to take a sip of coffee, but his stomach felt too twisted to drink it, so he set it aside and asked, “Well, Nate, as lang as I gat ya an-line here, an’ since ya want me ta tack to _you_ when I need somethin’ – are you guys ganna – fackin’ – do somethin’ ta increase my fackin’ security er what?”

“We already sent you a fucking army of Klokateers.”

“Well somehow despite dat and da fackin’ minefield outside, dere was a break-in two nights ago. An’ don’t even try ta act like Charles didn’t know two seconds after it happened. Fackin’ – took some personal shit. Fackin’ electronics an’ stuff.” Seth shrugged, and his eyes slid sideways. “Nothin’ important – ya know – but I gat like, a fackin’ wife an’ kid an’ shit. Dis is s’posed ta be my castle an’ I – I feel fackin’ _violated,_ ya know? It ain’t easy runnin’ dis fackin continent.”

They’d taken his personal computer, a couple externals and a bunch of discs. He didn’t mention the tapes. 

Nathan frowned. “Probably some bat-shit fans. We’ll take care of it.”

“I fackin’ hope so.”

*

“Done,” Zack had said. “Easiest money I ever made.”

It was hard to blame him – or any of the guys. Tomahawk was a small town, and good pussy was hard to come by. It seemed a lot easier to blame Pickles – for drinking too much, for acting like a slut, for those fuckin DIY nipple-piercings and that goddamn crazy-bitch-with-daddy-issues vibe that Seth knew from experience worked like fucking gravity.

Still, his heart sank when Zack handed him the tape.

*

_Hey bro. Your boyfriend says I’m not supposed to contact you anymore._

_**WTF are you talking about?** _

_So if you don’t hear from me, it’s not cuz I forgot about you._

_**OK.** _

_See ya when I see ya?_

The amount of time that elapsed told Seth that Pickles had probably typed out about three different replies before settling on another _**OK.**_

_Goodnight, Chris._

It felt good to use that name – to remind Pickles that there was still at least one secret between them. Seth climbed back into bed and turned off his phone rather than waiting for a reply that he knew wouldn’t come.


	6. Play Me

_Play me._

The unsteady script on the note clearly belonged to Pickles, but Nathan didn’t recognize the handwriting on the label of the VHS – Sharpie so faded it was almost gone: _Pickles ‘88._ He turned the relic over in his hands, jabbed his thick fingers into the sprockets to turn the tape forward and back, the way he’d done as a kid when the VCR malfunctioned.

Of course, Pickles had also dug up one of those – probably bought it online just for this occasion – and had a Klokateer wire it up to the behemoth television set in Nathan’s bedroom. Nate slid the tape into the machine with a mixture of excitement and apprehension – Pickles’ freaky side had never been prone to this sort of premeditation, and there was something a little… _committed_ about it.

The screen flickered for a second with the image of a room – some bedroom that Nathan didn’t recognize – before lagging and rolling into several seconds of static, then re-materializing into an extreme close-up of Pickles’ bare chest and throat as he fiddled with the camera, muttering, “Fack. Fackin’ piece’a shit – jest stee – fackin’ – okee. Perfect. Fackin’ don’t move.”

Satisfied, Pickles climbed back into his recliner – a massive, plush thing upholstered in red that he loved passing out in – and Nathan swallowed as he remembered the time Pickles had straddled him there. _Bruises er it didn’t happen,_ he’d said, wiry fingers guiding Nate’s clumsy ones up to his hips.

On the screen, Pickles wore only a pair of briefs – cheetah-print in place of the usual white – and sat with his legs splayed languidly apart in a pose that looked careless but which Nathan knew was designed especially for _him._

“Heey, Nate.”

Nathan glanced at the door before sitting down on the edge of his bed, already feeling the effects of Pickles – basically naked, saying his name, looking right into him with those wily green eyes that seemed maybe just a touch clearer than usual. He wondered if it was too soon to unzip his pants.

“So, I tat about weerin’ clothes – maybe doin’ some kinda stripper dance fer ya – but I know if I tried dat in person ya’d jest teer ‘em aff me anywee.” Pickles slipped a thumb down to snap the elastic of his underwear. “An’ ya won’t admit it, but I know ya love me in dese fackin’ things –”

“You look fucking ridiculous,” Nathan had said the first time he saw them.

“Yeah, well – it looks like fackin’ ridiculous gives ya a boner, dood.”

Now, alone in his room, Nate could admit to himself that he _did_ like those dumbass cheetah briefs, as long as they were about to come off.

“– but try an’ pay attention up here fer a minute, okee?” Pickles smirked and gestured towards his face, and Nathan groaned. Pickles might be the one getting hit, choked, spanked and spit on, but Nate never forgot which of them ran the show, and he once again found himself at Pickles’ mercy, struggling to listen while the drummer continued to toy absently with the hem of his undies, giving Nathan periodic glimpses of that tiger-orange bush that made his palms sweat and his mouth go dry.

“I know I been actin’ like a douchebeeg lately,” Pickles said, before amending, “An’ I guess in general. Ya know, with… with this… whatever it is we been doin’. An’ I know I’m like, all distant an’ bitchy one minute, an’ then two hours later I’m beggin’ ya ta fack me, an’ dat ain’t – it’s prably fackin’ annoying and it ain’t very feer to ya. It’s confusing. I guess I’m confused.” He looked down, a slow blush creeping into his face while he fiddled with his dreads, sweeping them over his right shoulder and twisting them into a bunch. He did that when he was nervous, Nathan knew, and he thought about how that thick rope of hair would feel wound around his fist. Pickles cleared his throat. “An’ ya prably noticed I been kinda weird dis past week, after I kinda… spazzed out an ya. An’ yer a smart guy, so ya prably figured out it was – ya know, home stuff dat was buggin’ me er whatever.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. But anywee, I wanted ta make it up to ya.” 

He stopped playing with his hair then, and leaned back in the recliner, the fingers of his right hand drumming on the arm-rest, while his left hand wandered up to one nipple, and his eyes considered the camera lens. “Two rules.”

Nathan scowled.

“Okee, more like one rule an’ one spoiler.” Pickles licked his lips. “Spoiler: I’m ganna come. I been holdin’ aff fer a few dees, so it’s prably ganna be real messy. If ya don’t _want_ me ta come, den I suggest stappin’ da teep right now, comin’ over ta my room, an fackin’ punishin’ me fer doin’ it without yer permission. If ya _do_ want me ta come, I suggest ya get comfortable and enjoy da rest’a da feature, den come over ta my room anywee.” He smiled, right hand slipping down to rub against the front of his briefs, fingers clutching at the bulge there.

Nathan mirrored the gesture, still resisting the urge to undo his fly until he heard Pickles’ final rule.

“If ya decide ta keep an watchin’ – an’ I hope ya do, ‘cause I fackin’ made this ‘specially _for_ ya – I want ya ta come an da screen. Jest blow yer fackin’ load all over me, okee?” Pickles gave a hard squeeze on the curve of his prick. “ _Fack,_ dood – it makes me fackin’ thirsty jest thinkin’ about it.”

Nate didn’t waste any more time.

“Does this make me gay?” he asked, the first time Pickles went down on him.

Pickles looked up at him with a smirk that was equal parts affection and amusement. “I don’t think dat’s what y’oughtta be worried about,” he said.

“Oh.” Nathan felt relieved, if still a little confused. He’d never tried so hard to talk himself out of something, but if Pickles said so, Nate was happy to go along with it – after all, Pickles once drunkenly bragged that he’d been “sucking dick since you were sucking your thumb,” which was hopefully an exaggeration, but in any case, Nathan had never really thought of his friend as _gay,_ despite the admission, so maybe Pickles was right an letting your drummer blow you was less faggy than it was reckless, which he was okay with – until Pickles spit into his palm and added, “What y’ _oughtta_ be worried about is whether dis makes us gay fer each _other._ ”

Nate had stopped worrying about any of it after a few months. Now, watching Pickles on his television, all he could think about was how fucking _hard_ he was, like a teenager watching his first porno – if the star of your first porno was basically a death-metal god and kept saying your fucking _name._

“Fack, Nate’n,” Pickles was saying, “I need ya so fackin’ bad anymore.” He’d pulled his cock out by now, already leaking and red, flushed the same color as his cheeks. “I – ya know I’m a fackin’ slut, rght? An’ like, fer da langest time I jest tat I’d always be dat wee – gettin’ pounded by regular jack-affs too chicken-shit ta actually fackin’ _bite_ me…” Pickles gave himself a few slow strokes, arching an eyebrow at the camera to ask, “I ain’t makin’ ya _jealous,_ am I, Nate? I guess next time ya better really remind me whose I am – give me some good marks so’s I don’t forget.”

Nathan’s eyes followed Pickles’ fingernails as they raked across his chest, leaving four long streaks that looked like they hurt, but not nearly enough. “Fucking _finally,_ ” he muttered when Pickles slid the briefs off his legs and kicked them away somewhere.

“An’ anywee, ya don’t need ta be.” Pickles slipped two fingers into his mouth, sucking at them wetly while he adjusted himself to drape one leg over the arm of the chair to allow for better access. “Yer basically da only thing dat does it fer me anymore,” he confessed. “Even when I’m like, jackin’ aff an’ I could be thinking about anything – fackin’, unicorns an’ shit –” He pressed one finger inside himself, closing his eyes and biting his lip, letting out a pleasurable little hum before resuming. “An’ all I can think about is yer hands, yer voice, yer huge fackin’ cack fackin’ me so hard I can’t fackin’ breathe. Nobody else knows how to use me like dat.” Pushing a second finger in, he sighed. “Fackin’ Christ, Nate – I hope yer keepin’ up.”

*

As far as Pickles could remember, he’d first kissed Nathan in Havana, on the third night of their second Friender-Bender, halfway through their fifth bottle of tequila while they watched a torrential rainfall from the dry safety of their hotel balcony. But Nathan knew it was years earlier than that – on a sticky night in Miami at the roach-infested apartment they’d christened “Mordhaus,” back when they were living off Snakes n’ Barrels residuals, still scraping together the money to record their demo _and_ pay a mounting stack of noise citations.

 _He’s so light,_ Nathan remembered thinking as he helped Pickles to bed. Strange that someone who filled so much of Nathan’s world could be so light. He remembered Pickles’ arm hooked loosely over his broad shoulders, the smell that was mostly booze and sweat but also something else, the oily softness of his hair and the little wrinkles that had begun to appear at the corners of Pickles’ eyes, but only if you were close enough to see them.

And yeah, he’d seen Pickles shit-faced on more occasions than he could count, but on that night it seemed as though Pickles had slipped back in time somehow, and now he was slurring in a thicker-than-usual accent, clinging to Nathan’s shirt with a sort of deliberate weakness as the singer guided him down onto his air-mattress and mumbling, “I want to – I want to – but I keen’t.”

“Can’t what?” Nathan tucked the sheets around his friend, and Pickles cast them aside.

“We gatta get outta here, dood,” he babbled as he struggled to remove his shirt, then finally gave up and held his arms above his head while Nathan tore the thing off. “We gatta get out. I keen’t – I keen’t stee here anymore. I’m ganna fackin’ die if I stee here one more night.”

“No you’re not. Don’t be stupid.”

On the floor beside the bed, Nathan noticed a letter, lying amongst the usual mess of empties and magazines and crumpled up Kleenex. Pickles got mail sometimes – fan-mail, mostly, forwarded to him from his old label in L.A. But this came from Wisconsin State Prison; the envelope was addressed to “Pickles,” and while the paper had been folded into thirds, Nathan could make out the first few lines, which read:

_Dear Chris –_

_How’s it going? Can you fucking believe I’m back in here again? I’m not sure if you got my last letter, since you fell off the face of the fucking earth after I saw you in LaCrosse last year, and Mom told me she didn’t think you were living in L.A. anymore. You really ought to grow the fuck up and let people know where you are._

_Anyway, prison fucking sucks, but what else is new? My commissary’s getting a little low, so if you won’t come and visit, the least you could do is send me some fucking –_

“I keen’t _sleep,_ ” Pickles whined, tossing his head from side to side. “Fack, dood – how d’ya expect me ta sleep when I keen’t even fackin’ _breathe?_ We gatta get outta here. We gatta leave reet _now._ ” He sat up abruptly, and without thinking, Nathan shoved him back onto the mattress, one hand across Pickles’ chest, pinning him there while he blinked up at Nathan with red, unfocused eyes. Nate felt Pickles’ fingers around his forearm, stronger than he would’ve guessed, and he expected Pickles to tell him to _fack aff. Don’t touch me. What da **fack** are ya doin’?_ Nathan released his hold, but Pickles kept his grip on Nate’s wrist, and he lifted Nathan’s hand off his chest to stare, green eyes almost crossed in wonder, thumb swiping across the span of it before he pressed a long, hard kiss into the flesh of Nathan’s palm.

“Jesus,” Pickles said breathlessly, “Yer hands are fackin’ _huge._ ”

A slow, strange smile spread across his face, and he guided Nathan’s touch downward to rest at the base of his throat. Nathan swallowed. His hand fit so perfectly there – fingers nearly encircling Pickles’ neck, the heel of his palm nested in the hollow just above Pickles’ collar-bone. Pickles tilted his head back, and Nathan could feel his muscles moving, could feel his jugular pulse, fast and hard beneath a thin layer of skin – delicate and unreal.

“Fack, Nate.” Pickles looked up at him from beneath flickering eyelashes and pressed down on Nathan’s fingers with his own. He bit down on his bottom lip, eyebrows knit in an expression that looked uncomfortably like pleasure. “Oh fack, dood. Jest a little. Jest for a second. I wish – I wish I wasn’t so drunk reet now.”

Nathan sat like that, frozen, squeezing gently on Pickles’ windpipe while Pickles’ hips ground up against nothing.

 _The thing in there wants the thing in here,_ said a voice.

 _Chris,_ Nathan thought, holding the name in his mind for a moment before letting it wash away as though it had been written in sand. After a minute, Pickles’ body stilled and his breathing slowed, and his needy little sounds became a soft snore. Nathan kept his hand there as long as he dared, not wanting to let go.

*

Pickles always squirmed a lot right before he came, especially with no one holding him down, and now his back arched off the recliner while his orgasm rolled over him in waves. The initial spurt of it landed on his face and chest, and Pickles trembled as the rest spilled out onto his knuckles and his stomach.

He lay there for several minutes – long enough for Nathan to finish and then wipe the television screen with an old shirt. Eventually, one eye peeked open and a sly grin crept up the corner of Pickles’ mouth when he asked, “If yer still watchin’ – why da fack ain’t ya over in my bedroom yet?”

Nathan knocked as a courtesy, and waited for Pickles’ answer.

“Take yer damn time, dood.”

The lights were dim, and the room stank in a very familiar way; some nameless lo-fi demo played on the stereo. Nate closed the door behind him, still clutching the video cassette in one hand, and cleared his throat. At the sound of the deadbolt sliding into place, Pickles swiveled his recliner around and looked up from his DS, pretending not to notice the way Nate’s eyes widened as he realized that the drummer was naked, jizz still clinging to his cheek and his chest. 

“Jesus, dude – how long have you been sitting there?”

“Lang enough fer it ta get cold,” Pickles replied with a wicked smirk, dragging his fingers through the mess and smearing it down his stomach. “What took ya so lang?”

The sight was almost more than Nathan could stand. “I uh, didn’t know what you wanted me to do with this,” he growled, holding up the VHS.

Pickles smiled and cocked his head towards the camera – a bulky, ancient thing, now sitting on the night-stand. “I tat maybe could record over it. Ya know, if ya want.”


End file.
